Saturday
Another early morning! The girls had school today so I woke up as the last one got up at around 7:30. I started to wash my face and brush my teeth and I guess when I went to change my host grandma here woke up Jeanette. We had a nice breakfast of tea, bread and honey. Later, her host mom showed us how to make bread. We went to one of our neighbor's house to start weaving a rug, which ended up being really hard to set up. We went to the elementary school in the afternoon and had a meeting between our program and some of the men in the village. It was really cool because one of our professors, Lahcen, grew up here and went on to get his BA and Ph.D. He translated for us today and yesterday and he was talking to the men here about the new family code (which has given women more legal rights in terms of divorce and inheritance in addition to changing the laws about how many wives they can have, etc). The men here were saying that it's bad because the feel like women now have more rights than men, but I was impressed that my professor openly disagreed with them and gave them specific examples. I really have a new respect for him now (his lectures are pretty dry and somethings are definitely lost in translation) especially after he confronted families he grew up with. Afterwards I hung out with some friends then headed back to the house. Jeanette and I had a lesson with the kids before dinner, sharing French English and darija. The 15 year old speaks a little French so we were asking him words from French to Arabic. He's really smart, so it's sad thinking he stopped going to school. The high school is really really far and he'd have to live there, so he stays home and helps out with the animals. After dinner we read for a little bit, then we went to bed. Jeanette's reading the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which I read and loved this summer. It's such an intense book so I'm predicting a lot of reading in the next few days.
So the rest of the homestay I just did bullet points becasue I got a lot of funny looks when I wrote a lot and I ran out of paper. Some things I can remember, like Sunday we tried to meet up with our friends at the school, but we ended up being followed by our host grandma, the nthey didn't show up so we tried to go visit the program director, Nawal because the girl who had lived where we did the weaving ended up movig out because she had a similar experience when the mother and the grandmother were asking her for money and for things. But Nawal wasn't there, so we ended up hiking up and down a couple small mountains for no real reason with our grandmother behind us the whole time. We went to weaving and found out that our friend had moved, but we were going to continue weaving there regardless. So we did that, then read and hung out the rest of the day. It's so beautiful here, but it's tough because we can't communicate very well and there isn't very much to do.
So we've started Americanizing some darija phrases like Shnu (which means what) and saying Shnu T F? and "I'm yallahing!" (yallah means like "let's go") and there are a few key phrases like "zweena" (pretty/nice) and zweena bzef. Everything is zweena bzef or mzien (good).
On Monday we went to the elementary school with the 2 girls because our program is planning on helping out. It was so cute! I ended up holding hand with Hadija, who is adorable, on the way and we all (jeanette, me, hadija, nezha and her friend marriam) ended up walking hand in hand on the way to the school. I was talking to my friend about how cute the kids are and she said thatshe would marry her host brother so he could go the US with us. I was like "He's 13, I'm not sure that's legal..." But the kids are all super cute! After we lined up in front of the flag and sang the national anthem, we went into the classrooms with the kids and taught them "head, shoulders knees and toes" It was adorable! Then we went outside to help fix up their school. Before we started, we were warned not to put our hands under any rocks because scorpions are not out the question. I was terrified. At this point though, I was so tired from the early morning and oh yeah, did I mention we sleep on the floor? and they have dogs and sheep and chickens that are all pretty loud at night. So I actually made up a song to "I'm on a boat." It's called "We're helping trees" and the lyrics went something like "I got my rocks and no scorpions..." etc. Also I just kept saying "more rocks, no scorpions" hoping that if I said it enough, it would be true. Thank God there weren't any. So now I figure I should mention how low my hygiene standards have sunk. Not to be too gross, but we pee in the chicken coop. Sometimes next to the donkey. Except on Tuesday night I just couldn't do it. There were 2 donkeys and the chickens in the corner and the grandma standing there with the flashlight to ward off the dogs. It was awful. So she took us to the back of the house to pee. At first she forgot to bring the flashlight, so she went back in to get it, leaving me and Jeanette in the dark. The dogs started to bark at us so we started running back inside, but our host grandma got out there and could not stop laughing at us. Between Sunday and Monday night I hadn't touched my hair once because I hadn't washed it. By Wednesday it was pretty gross, let me tell you. Never again. I just started asking myself "does it even matter anymore?" for a lot of things. Like food. We were told not to eat fresh fruits and vegetables and steer away from the butter. I ate all of those things. The only thing I absolutely would not do was drink the water. Between the 2 of us, we had gone through something like 15 large bottles of water. On Tuesday we painted at the school. We whitewashed the walls and painted the alphabet and some really nice designs. Some played soccer or frisbee with the kids, then we had soda, cookies and cake with them. We took so many pictures! The kids were so cute and said that they would never forget what we did for them. That night we were so excited because we figured, it's the last night so maybe we'll have a nice dinner. Our stomachs sunk when our host mom brought in a plate of cold fish and bread. Have I mentioned how much bread we've eaten? because it was a TON. I mean I love bread more than anyone I've ever met and I thought we'd eaten too much. It was a crazy amount of bread. But anyway, I'm not a big fan of fish, so we ate a very small amount (which I felt bad because I could tell it was a special thing for us) and ended up eating granola bars that Jeanette had brought and whipping out the chocolate and dates I had brought. It was sad to leave on Wednesday, but all I could think about was how long I was going to spend in the shower. I missed my host family in Rabat sooo much. And I couldn't wait to use a toilet. So when I got back The first thing I did was tell my family how it went over lunch, then I took a half hour shower. To celebrate our return to civilization, my friends and I went out and got toblerone mcflurries. It was awesome. Later I went out with Chayma and Ahmed and our neighbor Amina. We got glasses for Chayma, shoes for Amina and I (I threw out my pair of black heels at home and they were $5 here...) and a shirt for Ahmed.
Thursday
This morning I found out that my host mom here has been working on her english while I've been in the village working on my darija. We're able to communicate much better now! It's so cute! So since we don't have classes today and tomorrow, Chandra and I are planning on spending Saturday and Sunday travelling to Meknes and Azrou and hiking. I'm so excited! We went for a 2 hour run/walk/staring at the beach and put our feet in, then watched glee and planned some of our adventure. After Diablo (that Spanish soap opera that they watch religiously), Chayma and I went to the hammam. Oh man I cannot tell you how nice it is to be completely clean. It's a $0.75 spa treatment. I've never had smoother legs or cleaner skin.
No comments:
Post a Comment